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STATE OF THE UNION. 



SPEECH 



OP 



I ^" 



HON. SHERRARD CLEMENS, OF VIRGINIA, 



IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 22, 1861. 



The House having under consideration the report from 
the select committee of thirty-three— 

Mr. CLEMENS said: 

Mr. Speaker: For two years and more, my 
voice has rarely resounded in this Hall. On ques- 
tions of high debate my vote has even been want- 
ing. Contending with physical anguish, on a 
bed of languishment and disease, the dependent 
mind could be but wearily exercised. 1 know, 
sir, I have done nothing worthy of the high place 
to which I have been so generously called. 1 
know I have not justified the expectations of the 
noble constituency whose sympathy has soothed, 
and whose support has smoothed , the thorny path 
which sickness always brings. Sacred silence is, 
perhaps, the proper "meed for these sacred mat- 
ters; but I would feign believe, that, by a benign 
ordination of God, at the very period when my 
services are needed by my people most, I have, 
in the precious boon of renovated health, the power 
to represent them. I would speak in their cause, this 
day, living, as they do, upon the very confines of 
what may be hostile confederacies. I would speak 
as one who has never known anything from them 
but the beneficence with which they have sus- 
tained me , and thegoodofHcesby which they have 
overflowed my heart with gratitude. Sir, I would 
not speak in passion. It befits not the solemn 
and portentous issues of this hour. We are in the 
midst of great events. We are making history. 
We may be in the dying days of this Republic; 
and I should undo my deeds, I should unknow 
my knowledge, before I would, as the traveler in 
the Alps, utter, even in a whisper, one word which 
might bring down the avalanche upon the quiet 
homes of my people. I would speak as a south- 
ern man, identified by birth, by education, by 
residence, by interest, by property, by affection, 
with her population. Sir, on a bayou of the 
Mississippi, reposes now in quiet the inheritance 
of my children — an inheritance which, even in 
slaves, amounts to one half of the whole number 
in all the eleven Bounties which compose my con- 
gressional district in Virginia. I would speak as 
a western Virginian, and as the custodian of the 



property of those children, who are not old enough 
to know the peril to which it is exposed by those 
who are riding on the very crest of the popular 
wave, but who are yet destined to sink in the 
very trough of the sea, to a depth so unfathom- 
able that a bubble will never rise to mark the spot 
where they went so ignomiuiously down ! Well 
may those who have inaugurated the revolution 
which is now stalking over the land cry out, with 
uplifted hands, for peace, and deprecate the effu- 
sion of blood. It was the inventor of the guillo- 
tine who was its first unresisting victim; and the 
day may not be far off before we may find those 
among our own people who will be compelled to 
rely upon the magnanimity of the very popu- 
lation they have outraged and deceived. The au- 
thors of revolutions have often been their vic- 
tims. 

Sir, at this hour, I have no heart to enter into 
the details of this argument, or to express the in- 
dignant emotions which rise to my lips and plead 
for utterance. Before God, and in my inmost con- 
science, I believe that slavery will be crucified, if 
this unhappy controversy ends in a dismember- 
mentof the Union. Sir, ifnotcrucified, it will carry 
the death rattle in its throat. I may be a timid 
man; I may not know what it is to take up arms 
in my own defense. It remains to be seen, how- 
ever, whether treason can be carried out with the 
same facility itcan be plotted and arranged. There 
is a holy courage among the minority in every 
slave State, that may be for the time overwhelmed. 
Lazarus is not dead, but sleepeth. Ere long, the 
stone will be rolled away from the mouth of the 
tomb, and we shall have all the glories of a new 
resurrection. 

Sir, who has forgotten that, among the clans of 
Scotland, beacon fires could be lit, by concerted 
signals, leaping, for a time, from mountain crag 
to mountain crag, in living volumes of flame, yet 
expiring even in its own fierceness and sinking 
into ashes, as the faggots were consumed? This 
maybe likened to a "rebellion, such as political 
leaders may sometimes prompt for a brief hour; 
but the fires burn with the faggots, and all is cold 



t.^ 






and dark again. There is as much contrast be- 
tween such a movement and a real uprising among 
the masses for their violated rights, as there is 
between Bottom the weaver and Snug the joiner, 
who can " roar you as gently as any sucking 
dove;" and " coo you an 'twere any nightingale.^' 
One is the stage trick of a political harlequin ysVhe 
other a living reality. The one is a fitful and lurid 
flame; the other, a prairie on fire, finding, in ev'e'ry 
step of its progress, food for its all-ravening maw. 

Sir, in this exigency, before this political con- 
spiracy, I may stand alone with my colleague 
from the Norfolk district, [Mr. Millson,] who 
has more political sagacity than generally falls to 
the lot of mortal men. Let it be even so. I seek 
no office. My political race is voluntarily run. 
History will record the proceedings of this tur- 
bulent period; and time, the gentle but infallible 
arbiter of all things earthly, will decide the truth. 
Cruel words may be borne, in the idea that the 
day is not far distant when there will be charita- 
ble speeches, and cool, second thoughts, and the 
revulsion, which always follows the whipped syl- 
labub of passion. Here I take my stand ! 

Sir, we live in an age of political paradoxes. 
Broad, expansive love of country, has become 
a diseased sentimentality. Patriotism has been 
transformed into a starveling birdling, clinging 
with unfledged wings around the nest of twigs 
where it was born. A statesman no\o must not 
only 

" Narrow his mind, 
And to party give up what was meant for mankind," 

but he must become as submissive as a blind 
horse in a bark mill, to every perverted opinion, 
which sits, whip in hand, on the revolving shaft, 
at the end of which he is harnessed, and meekly 
travels. To be considered a diamond of the first 
water, he must stand in the Senate house of his 
country, and in the very face of a forbearing peo- 
ple, glory in being a traitor and a rebel. He must 
solemnly proclaim thedeathof thenationto which 
he has sworn allegiance, and, with the grim sto- 
lidity of an undertaker, invite its citizens to their 
own funeral. He must dwarf and provincialize 
his patriotism to the State on whose local passions 
he thrives, to the county where he practices court, 
or to the city where he flaunts in all the meretri- 
cious dignity of a Doge of Venice. He can take 
an oath to support the Constitution of the United 
States, but he can enter with honor into a con- 
spiracy to overthrow it. He can, under the sanc- 
tity of the same oath, advise the seizure of forts 
and arsenals and dock-yards and ships and money 
belonging to the Union, whose officer he is, and 
find a most loyal and convenient retreat in State 
authority and State allegiance. He is ready to 
laugh in your face when you tell him that, be- 
fore he was "muling and puking in his nurse's 
arms," there lived a very ooscure person by the 
name of George Washington, and who, before he 
died, became eminent, by perpetrating the immor- 
tal joke of advising the people of the United 
States that "it is of infinite moment that we 
should properly estimate the immense value of our 
national Union; that we should cherish a cordial, 
habitual, and immovable attachment to it; that we 
should watch for its preservation with jealous 



anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest 
a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; 
and indignantly frown upon the first dawning of 
every attempt to alienate any portion of our coun- 
try from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties 
which now link together the various parts." 

Sir, that great man penetrated, as with the 
acumen of a seer, into the crowntng bane of this 
disastrous period, when he warned his country- 
men against the consequences of geographical 
parties. Extremes in the North and extremes in 
the South have at last met. Parties have been 
organized and carried on by systematic perver- 
sions of each other's aims and objects. In the 
North it has beren represented that the South de- 
sired and intended to monopolize with slave labor 
all the public territory; to drive out free labor; 
to convert every free State into common ground 
for the recapture of colored persons as slaves who 
were free; and to put the Federal Government, in 
all its departments, under the control of a slave 
oligarchy. These and all other stratagems that 
could be resorted to to arouse antagonistic feel- 
ings were wielded with turbulent and tumultuous 
passion. As we planted, so we reap. Now, 
that victory has been obtained by the Republican 
party, and the Government must be administered 
upon national policy and principles, the fissures 
in the ground hitherto occupied become apparent; 
and hence there must necessarily be a large de- 
fection in its ranks among the more ultra of its 
adherents, who are, as a general thing, ideal, 
speculative, and not practical men. 

Out of power, a party is apt to be radical; vest 
it with power, and it becomes conservative. This 
is the ordeal through which the Republican, like 
all other parties, is now passing; and it is to be 
jj hoped, for the peace of the country, it will result 
II in the triumph of practical and national, rather 
| j than ideal policy and sectional measures. Herein 
jj consists the almost insuperable difficulty of com- 
i] ing to any feasible adjustment upon the existing 
|! discontents. The bulk of politicians, North and 
South, are bound by a past record and past pro- 
fessions. They are thinking all the while of what 
Mrs. Grundy will say. The people understand 
the cause of the difficulty, and are moving. If 
they could interpose, the country might yet be 
saved. 

Sir, what is that difficulty now; what has it 
always been? I appeal to every unprejudiced 
man's experience to say, whether it has not been 
that, in the hands of ultraists North and ultraists 
South, the slaveholder has been used as a shut- 
tledore, and, for purposes utterly dissimilar, has 
been banded from South Carolina to Massachu- 
setts, and from Massachusetts to South Carolina, 
until now the last point of endurance has been 
reached. Every virulent word uttered North 
has been sent South, and the South has responded 
in the same virulent spirit. Nay, the Abolitionist 
himself has been' granted an audience in every 
southern city , at every southern political meeting, 
and the most violent, insulting, agrarian speeches 
repeated in the hearing even of slaves themselves. 
Is it not a humiliation to confess, that the very 
people who would burn in effigy, if not at the 
stake, a postmaster who would dare to distribute 



a copy of ultra abolition speeches, honor as among 
their chief defenders, the candidates who can quote 
the most obnoxious passages from all ? Who has 
made of southern politics, a vast hotbed, for the 
propagation of abolition sentiments, but ultra 
southern men themselves? Who has indoctrin- 
ated the northern people with dissimilar senti- 
ments, expressed by the most ultra southern men, 
but northern zealots themselves ? 

The population of the two great sections of this 
nation stand, therefore, towards each other, at this 
moment, like encamped armies, waiting for the 
command to battle. The patriot plans, deplores, 
appeals, deplores and plans and appeals again, find- 
ding but little succor in the only^quarter whence , 
succor can come. The Abolitionist revels in the j 
madness of the hour. He sees the crack in the ice- 
berg at last. For him the desert and the battle field 
are both alike welcome. He kneels down in the 
desert with the camels, for a speck in the far distant 
horizon shows the simoon is coming. He looks 
into the future as into a dark cloud in the morn- 
ing, when nothing sings but the early lark. Soon 
history, like the light of that eastern horizon, will j 
curtain back that cloud, and paint in blood's rud-i 
diest tints, field and forest, hamlet and city, the | 
very mountains, to their pine crowned tops, and i 
the great o^ean itself, as an ensanguined flood, 
where brother contending with brother, shall find 
a nameless sepulcher! 

No anaconda, with his filthy folds around the i 
banyan tree, ever threw out the venomous tongue, 
and yearned with fiercer passion for the crushed 
bone and the pulpy flesh-, than he now expectant 
of his prey, yearns for the long postponed repast. 
Well may he cry that the day of jubilee has come. ! 
Well may he marshal his hosts to the last great 
war of sections and of races. Defeated, stigma- j 
tized, insulted, scoffed at, ostracized, gibbeted by 
his countrymen, he now gloats over the most 
fearful of all retributions. His deadliest foes 
hitherto in the South, have now struck hands in 
a solemn league of kindred designs, and with 
exultant tramp, stolidly march, adorned like a 
Roman ox, with the garlands of sacrifice, to their 
eternal doom. 

Sir, is it necessary to proclaim what Mat is? 
At this moment, when a sudden frenzy has struck 
blind the southern people, it cannot even be real- 
ized; and I may be scoffed and hooted at with 
that perversity in ill which masses of men some- 
times display who are intent on their own inev- 
itable destruction. Sir, when 1 look at my coun- 
try, its present desolate condition , and its possible 
fate, I am almost ready to close the quick accents 
of speech, and allow the heart to sink down voice- 
less in its despair! Listen to the words of Wil- 
liam Lloyd Garrison, and tell me what answer 
you will give to them: 

" At last the covenant with death is annulled and the 
agreement with hell broken, by the action of South Carolina 
herself, and ere long by all the slaveholding States, for their 
doom is one. Hail the approaching jubilee, ye millions who 
are wearing the galiing chains of slavery, for assuredly the 
day of your redemption draws nigh, bringing liberty to you 
and salvation to the whole land." 

Hear him again: 

"Justice and liberty, God and man, demand the disso- 
lution of this slaveholding Union, and the formation of a 



northern confederacy, in which slaveholders will stand be- 
fore the law as felons, and be treated as pirates." 

Hear him again, in a voice so familiar that it 
sounds like one which ere-while rung out from 
the portico of the Mills House, in Charleston: 

" In all this, what State so prepared to lead as the old 
Bay State? She has already made it a penal offense to 
help to execute a law of the Union. I want to see the of- 
ficers of the State brought in collision with those of the 
Union. Up, then ! up with the flag of disunion ! that we 
may have a free and glorious Union of our own ! How 
stands Massachusetts at this hour in reference to the Union ? 
Just where she ought to be, in an attitude of open hostil- 
ity." 

Sir, there is an old maxim that it is lawful and 
wise to learn from our enemies. There is an- 
other man in the North — Wendell Phillips — of 
great pertinacity of purpose, of a heart like a vase 
filled with fire, of vast powers of illustration and 
declamation; and to whom the passions of the 
multitude are as clay is in the hands of a cunning 
molder. The senior Senator from New York 
[Mr. Seward] has an intellect of high culture, 
and his speeches are philosophical essays, mod- 
eled after the idealism and style of Burke; but his 
voice is harsh and guttural, and his spirit cold and 
impassive. Phillips is the man for the multitude. 
Seward for the closet. Since this session com- 
menced he has had an opportunity to make him- 
self immortal. Intrepidity of soul in a statesman 
carries with it the victories of peace, which the 
military chieftain gains in war. The panoply of 
political martyrdom, in this age, might have been 
a species of deification in the next. The accepted 
moment has passed; and I am fearful it will come 
to him never, never more. The dissolution of the 
Union dethrones the Republican party, disrobes 
it of power, and makes Garrison and Phillips, 
and their confederates, the absolute dictators of 
the North. 

And what says Phillips; 

" We are disunionists, not from any love of separate con- 
federacies, or as ignorant of the thousand evils that spring 
from neighboring and quarrelsome States ; but we would get 
rid of this Union, to get rid of slavery." 

Hear him again. He used the following lan- 
guage: 

"All hail, disunion! Sacrifice everything <bi the Union? 
God forbid ! Sacrifice everything to keep riouth Carolina 
in it ? Rather build a bridge of gold, and pay her toll over 
it. Let her march off with banners and trumpet 
will speed the parting guest. i hot not stand upon the 
order of her going, but go at once. Give her the forts and 
arsenals and sub-treasuries, and lend ber jewels of silver 
and gold, and Egypt will rejoice that she has de| 

We have, then, before us, these knights of a 
new crusade. The Constitution of the United 
States is the sanctified Jerusalem, against which 
their deluded cohorts are arrayed. They contend 
the only mode to overthrow slavery is to overthrow 
the Constitution. They refuse to take office un- 
der it, because it recognizes slavery. They will 
not take an oath to support it, because it protects 
slavery They claim their allegiance is due to 
the State, and to the State alone. They are State- 
rights men of the straightest sect; and they wield 
the legislative power of the State for the extinc- 
tion of slavery, as South Carolina professes 'to 
wield her's for the perpetuation of slavery. 



Sir, is there not left among us statesmanship 
sufficient to control these issues, and apply the 
corrective in time, and save this great country, 
now convulsed from its center to its circumfer- 
ence? Standing in the midst of these troubles, 
and looking into the future with the most inex- 
pressible apprehensions, I acknowledge, with 
rleasure, one patriotic move in the right direction, 
t is one of the cheering signs of this most disas- 
trous time, when "an airy devil's in the sky, and 
rains down mischiefs," that the descendant of 
two former Presidents, who bears an ancestral 
fame now greater than any man in America, should 
step forward with an offering of peace to an af- 
flicted people. Sir, grant it was nothing more 
than a covenant declaratory of the spirit of the 
Constitution. It was meet that Massachusetts, 
so largely partaking of our common glory in the 
past; Massachusetts, where the first blood for 
American liberty was shed — should rise superior 
to the convulsions of the hour, and give an ear- 
nest, at least, that the spirit of conciliation, of 
inter-State comity, of fraternal affection, was not 
yet wholly lost. As the worn traveler in the 
midst of the snows of the Alps lingers, with de- 
lighted gaze, upon the friendly light which peers 
from the windows of the distant convent, where, 
from the desolation of the storm around him, he 
may at last find repose, so do I hail that little 
gleam of hope in the midst of all the darkness of 
thjs hour. 

Sir, I speak not as a suppliant. I ask not for 
bounty. I will not accept quarter. I demand 
only that justice which springs at the bidding of 
an honest magnanimity ! North Carolina, which, 
first of all, proclaimed ourindependence;and Vir- 
ginia, which, first of all, gave birth to it, both 
allied to Massachusetts by the renown of a great 
past which no civil convulsion can ever destroy 
or impair, yet linger within the bounds of the 
Union in hppes to save a country whose glory 
belongs to us all. Will you step forward and meet 
them, with grasped hands, in the spirit which 
made your fathers illustrious; or will you steel 
yourself against every noble impulse, and shut 
out every access to sympathy and affection? Let 
the errors of the past be forgotten. If the disas- 
ters of the hour have sprung from the seeds you 
planted, let the act be forgiven. Fruitful examples 
in your history cluster all around us. Let us ex- 
hume the records of the past, and hear the senti- 
ments of another distinguished son, and see 
whether we cannot gather from him some wis- 
dom to guide our counsels. 

In March, 1798, when the bill for the erection 
of a government in the Mississippi Territory 
was before Congress, it was moved that the same 
should lie, in all respects, similar to that estab- 
lished in tin 1 Northwestern Territory, except that 
'• slavery should not be forbidden." Mr. Thatcher, 
of Massachusetts, moved to strike out the ex- 
cepting clause, thus excluding slavery in that 
Territory. 

Mr. Otis, of Massachusetts, " hoped his col- 
league would not withdraw his motion; and the 
reason why he wished this was, that an oppor- 
tunity might be given to gentlemen who came 
from the same part of the Union with him, to mani- 



fest that it is not their disposition to interfere with 
the southern States as to the species of property fii 
question. He thought it was not the business of 
those who had nothing to do with that kind of 
property, to interfere with that right. If the amend- 
ment prevailed, it would declare that no slavery 
should exist in the Natchez country. This would 
not only be a sentence of banishment, but of war. By 
permitting slavery in this district of country, the 
number of slaves would not be increased, as if 
emigrants from South Carolina or Georgia were 
to remove into this country, they would bring 
their slaves with them; and he could see nothing 
in this which could affect the philanthropy of his 
friend." » 

Sir, if a descendant of Mr. Otis lives, let him be 
still prouder of the memory of his father; for the 
inauguration of the policy upon which he acted, 
in this high place, would at this time, give peace 
to thirty millions of people. Is the spirit of the 
olden time all vanished? Is patriotism to be ex- 
humed from the cooled lava of another Pompei 
and Herculaneum? 

What divides the North and South at this mo- 
ment? Is it the personal liberty bills? No, sir! 
Not so much them. Is it the fugitive slave law? 
No, sir; not so much that. The great superin- 
ducing cause of all difficulty has been that very 
territorial question which was settled so quietly 
by the policy of Mr. Otis in 1798, and is now 
settled on the same principle by the Supreme 
court. # 

In the superb argument made by my colleague 
from the Norfolk district on yesterday, (in my 
estimation the best effort of his life,) he declared 
that, upon this question, the South had gained 
the principle, but the North had the benefit of its 
practical operation; that the North had the sub- 
stance, but the South the shadow. That both 
were victors, and yet both were vanquished. Sir, 
it is even so. In 1790, the price of a male field 
hand twenty -four years of age, as shown by the 
recorded appraisement of an estate in the county 
where I live, was $250. At that period , the labor 
of a slave was cheaper than that of a freeman; but 
the invention of Whitney's cotton-gin, opening 
the virgin soil of the tropics to a more profitable 
investment than had ever been hitherto known, 
rapidly increased the value of slaves, during a 
period of thirty years, to an incredible per cent- 
age. Slavery became allied with capital, and, as 
the remunerative prices for cotton increased, was 
placed more and more beyond the reach of men 
of small means. In 1850, hi the slave States, 
with a population of 6,000,000, the number of 
slaveholders was 347,555, heads of families, rep- 
resenting 1,500,000 people, and the number of 
slaves was over 3,000,000. Of this number, 68,820 
had but one slave each, 105,683 had under five 
slaves each, 174,503 slave owners held but 385,869 
slaves, while 173,022 held the whole balance, 
amounting to 2,818,444. In Virginia, in 1830, 
the white population amounted to 694,302; slaves 
to 469,755. In 1840, the whites were 740,968; 
slaves, 448,988. In 1850, the whites were 894,800; 
slaves, 472,528. In 1859, according to the report 
of the auditor, the whites amounted to 915,204; 
the slaves taxed were 272,073; and the slaves 



exempt from taxation, as under twelve years of 
age, were 2G0,507; leaving the whole number 
532,580. Here, in a period of thirty years, 
every man can see for himself what increase was 
made in slavery and white population in Vir- 
ginia. In a cycle of sixty years, the increase of 
the slaves in the border States has been only 64 
per cent., and the increase in the other southern 
States, including Texas, has been 700 per cent. 
In 1850, the number of white persons born south, 
who had voluntarily emigrated to the free States, 
amounted to 726,450; and it is most remarkable 
that the greatest number came from the border 
slave States. The number from Virginia was 
184,000; from Kentucky, 150,000; from North 
Carolina, 64,000; from Missouri, 20,000; from 
Maryland, 72,000; from Delaware, 7,000; and 
from Tennessee, 50,000. By the census of 1860, 
there are estimated to be about 4,000,000 slaves 
and about 7,500,000 whites who have no slaves. 
By the same census, the northwestern tier of free 
States, (Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wis- 
consin, and Minnesota,) gain by Representatives 
14membcrs of Congress. The New England States 
lose 4; the middle free States lose 5; the central 
slave States lose 6, and the coast-planting States 
lose 2. The whites in the free States are estimated 
at 19,000,000, and in the slave States at 9,000,000. 
I have grouped together these facts for the pur- 
pose of showing there is an irreversible law of 
population governing this question; and that it 
has been population the South wanted , rather than 
territory. They want population and capital; and 
if the proceedings of these days are allowed to 
be as inauspicious as they seem to be, I will show 
you a southern confederacy (created out of this 
Union) from which every man will turn back af- 
frighted and pale, because it will be on the bloody 
and reeking hand that his rights of property 
must depend. The deductions which might be 
drawn are diversified and various; but I have not 
now the time to amplify them. This fact, at 
least, is apparent to the plainest comprehension, 
that slavery cannot rapidly expand, either in the 
Union or out of it, as long as slaves remain at the 
present high prices. I defy any man here — I care 
not who he is — to meet me in the fair argument 
of this question, and not be tied down by that 
scythe [pointing to the clock] which revolves and 
cuts down the grassy moments as they spring. 
The only mode by which slavery can ever ex- 
pand is to reduce the price, and have a new source 
of supply. Now, mark you, in nearly all the 
southern States, except South Carolina, free white 
suffrage prevails, and the slaveholders hold their 
property under constitutional restrictions, it is 
true, but, at the same time, at the sufferance of 
seven millions, who have no slaves. We can 
begin to understand, now, why it is that, within 
late years, we have heard so much in regard to 
the reopening of the African slave trade. The 
class who hold the votes and exercise sovereign 
political power are beginning to make themselves 
felt They can see no difference between buying 
a slave in Africa and in Virginia; and it is espe- 
cially desirable to get a naked, chattering barba- 
rian, from the barracoons of Congo for $100, and 
lick him into shape, through the benign process 



of Christian civilization, rather than pay $1,600 
for one already civilized, in a domestic marke*. 
From 1856 up to this day, in every southern com- 
mercial convention — at Savannah, in Georgia; at 
Montgomery, in Alabama; at Vicksburg, in Mis- 
sissippi — the question has been agitated, and that, 
too, by many of the very men who, as politi- 
cians, have been most prominent in the existing 
revolution. 

A member of this House from Illinois, on the 
28th of December, 1859, put certain questions to 
certain gentlemen on this floor, and I desire to 
recur now to their answers; and, so far as Vir- 
ginia and the border slave States are concerned, 
it may not be without benefit in the present exi- 
gency. The answers were, substantially, as fol- 
lows. Every gentleman can see for himself the 
whole of them, by consulting the Congressional 
Globe: 

Mr. Miles, of South Carolina. " I am not pre- 
pared to say that I may not, at some future time, 
be in favor of reopening the African slave trade. 
There is no sensible man, north or south, who 
believes we can in the present Union reopen the 
African slave trade legally.'' 

Mr.Bonham, of South Carolina. "As to whether 
I would be in favor of reopening the African slave 
trade, in tht- event that this Confederacy should bt 
dissolved, I am not prepared to say." 

Mr. McRae, of Mississippi. " I am in favor 
of enforcing the laws as they now stand; but I 
consider them unconstitutional and bad laws: 
laws which are oppressive to the South; laxa 
which take away from the southern States their equal- 
ity in this Union, in reference to their labor sys- 
tem, so far as its supply is concerned. 

They go out of the Union because she will nol 
give them equality, and they go into the other 
Union to get equality. Suppose they do not gel 
it, what becomes of them ? That is a little prob- 
lem in the rule of three which will be ciphered 
out, if these events are much longer pending. 

Mr. Crawford, of Georgia, said: " Under ^par- 
ticular state of circumstances, I would be in favoi 
of reopening the African slave trade." 

Now, sir, if one so humble, as myself may ven- 
ture an opinion upon these and kindred matters 
I must be allowed to say that the border slave 
States may as well be prepared first as last for tht 
realization of the truth, that the coast States are 
aiming not so much ate&pansi <n within as expan- 
sion without the Union. Visions of conquest 
visions of military glory, float before the 
enthusiast, in the glowing speeches of at ctn; ..... 
Hermit of a new crusade, whose declared policy ii 
was " to inflame the southern mind, fire the south- 
ern heart, and precipitate the cotton States into o 
revolution." 

But where is slavery to expand ? The South 
goes out of the Union, and it will never touch as 
much earth of the territory that now belongs to 
it as I can grasp thus. Never ! Never ! A war of 
thirty years will never get it back. If you fight, 
you will never extort by a treaty from the North 
the same guarantees that you now have in this 
Constitution emblazoned on those shields above 
us — the very type of national strength and na- 
tional unity. 



6 



Where is slavery to expand ? Will it be to 
Central America? There England exercises sov- 
ereignty over more than half of her domain, com- 
prehending nearly the whole coast from Yucatan 
to New Granada. A debt of $70,000,000 is due 
from that country to British creditors, and British 
war vessels are at good anchorage to see that cus- 
tom-house duties are punctually paid for their ben- 
efit. Who has forgotten the interposition of Com- 
mander Salmon against the designs of General 
Walker, and his death mainly through that cause 
alone. In all that country slavery is abolished by 
treaties with England. Have we forgotten that 
the Earl of Aberdeen admitted that the utmost 
influence of the Government was to be exerted 
to procure the abolishment of slavery in Texas; 
and both he and Mr. Packenham admitted that 
this was with the ultimate view of a similar re- 
sult in the United States? At this very hour a 
commissioner is said to be in England to nego- 
tiate for southern independence, and to enter into 
an offensive and defensive treaty, based upon mu- 
tuality of interests. The South cannot descend 
to take the manufactures of New England , but she 
will gladly take those of Old England. No mat- 
ter that she docs give secure refuge in Canada to 
every fugitive slave; no matter that she did give 
in her dominions a safe place for Brown and his 
confederates to hatch their treasonable conspir- 
acy, and furnished Forbes, an English subject, to 
drill them; no matter if she did set the example 
of emancipation at an expense of hundreds of mil- 
lions as indemnity, and hundreds of millions more 
in losses of agricultural products, in the West 
Indies; no matter that she did procure the abol- 
ishment of slavery in Mexico, and has now a sum 
of $200,000,000 due her subjects, with a British 
vessel in the offing at Vera Cruz to see that the 
interest is duly paid; no matter if she devastates 
Hindostan with the tornado of her limitless rapa- 
city , makes Ireland a pauper house, and exiles four 
millions of her people from their native soil; no 
matter if she did expel the negroesof New Zealand 
from their lowly huts, and drive them to whole- 
sale slaughter. No, she may do ail this; she may, 
in cold blood, cut the throats and smother to 
death in their caverns the Caffirs of Good Hope; 
she may search out every square foot of soil upon 
God's habitable globe to raise cotton in competi- 
tion with that of the South; she may send Liv- 
ingston into the furthest recesses, the ultima Thule 
of Africa, where a buffalo, if stung by an insect, 
will die, to find some new soil in the secluded 
valleys of the interior, where the Manchester 
spinner can plant and grow the staple for his own 
spindle. Sir, this is the benefieent country, and this 
is the beneficent policy, the South is called to rely 
upon, through alliances offensive and defensive, 
and all the inter-complications of interest involved 
in a commercial treaty, after having, with more 
than judicial blindness, cut themselves off from 
their brothers on this continent; brothers in lin- 
eage; brothers in allegiance; and, in the midst of 
all perils, brothers in affection still! 

Mr. Speaker, there isachapter in the past which 
our retiring confederates may do well to remem- 
ber. In 1834, an English Abolitionist, by the 
name of George Thompson, was sent from Exe- 



ter Hall, in England, to enlighten the dead con- 
science of the American people. About that period 
John A. Murrill, of Madison county, Tennessee, 
had, by means of a secret band, bound with signs 
and oaths, arranged for a general rising of the ne- 
groes on the 25th of December, 1835. Among 
other papers found, was the following epistle of 
love from the English emissary, dated March 18, 
1834. It was addressed to Murrill: 

" Dear Sir: Your favor of the 4tli has come to hand, and 
its contents have been carefully observed. I think you can 
count upon the aid you demand with tolerable certainty by 
the time you name. I approve of your arrangements, and 
can perceive abundant justification of your views. Could 
the blacks effect a general concert of action, and let loose 
the arm of destruction among their masters, and their prop- 
erty, so that the judgment of God might be visibly seen and 
felt, it would reach the flinty heart. We must reach the 
tyrant in another way. His interests must be affected be- 
fore he will repent. We can prepare the feelings of most 
of the northern and eastern people by lecturing. The dis- 
solution of the Union is the object to be kept steadily in 
view. War will result, and sacking and pillage and in- 
surrection will follow. Their cities, with all the merchan- 
dise, may be destroyed, their banks plundered of specie, 
their paper discredited, so that thousands of eastern capi- 
talists would suffer great loss, and would henceforth con- 
sider a slave country an unsafe place to make investments. 
This state of affairs would naturally diminish the value 
of slave property, and disgust even the tyrant with the pel- 
icy of slavery, while the whole country would be thus in 
a state of anarchy and poverty. Their banking institutions 
and credit sunk into disrepute, it would be an easy matter 
to effect the total abolition of slavery. Desperate diseases 
require desperate remedies." 

Mr. Speaker, was this prophecy, and is it about 
to become a part of the history of this country? 
Mr. AVERY. If the gentleman means John 
A. Murrill, as I suppose he does, I will say that 
he quotes from the correspondence of a convict, 
who served out ten years in the penitentiary of 
Tennessee for stealing negroes. 

Mr. CLEMENS. Very well; the gentleman 
from Tennessee does not seem to understand that 
a man who would incite a negro insurrection 
would be very likely to steal negroes. 

I dismiss this unwelcome theme. Let me pass 
to another. It is evident that, in the event of the 
formation of a southern confederacy, there will be, 
besides the African slave trade, another element of 
discord and agitation, in which the Gulf and border 
States will have interests entirely dissimilar. Sla- 
very is the great ruling interest of the extreme Gulf 
States; the other States hare great interests besides 
slavery, which cannot be lightly abandoned. I admit 
it is to the advantage of the coast States to have 
a direct exchange of staple commodities for the 
manufactured articles of England and France. 
That this is proposed to be realized, we have the 
fullest proofs. Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, 
and New Orleans will become great marts of 
trade. Export duties and direct taxation will be 
to them a prosperous policy; but how will it op- 
crate upon the mechanical and manufacturing and 
mining industry and capital of Missouri, of Ken- 

j tucky, of Virginia, of North Carolina, of Mary- 
land, and Delaware, if they should form part of 
the confederation? I know it is asserted that a 

j mutuality of purposes and a community of inter- 

! est in slavery will avoid this result. How is it to 
be avoided? Sir, when it involves a contradiction 

' of the avowed designs of South Carolina for the 



last thirty years, and is in perfect correspond- 
ence with the declared plans of the people of the 
cotton States themselves, how, I say, will you 
avoid it? 

An examination of the census of 1860 will dis- 
close the astounding fact that if the Constitution 
of the United States is taken as a provisional 
form of government under this new convention 
which they have called to meet in Montgomery, 
Alabama, the cotton States, with those abutting 
upon them, will have, under the fixed ratio of 
representation, the legislative power over the bor- 
der slave States, and they will be bound by a 
policy which may be, as to their great material 
and mechanical interests, as oppressive as it will 
be ruinous. If these causes should exist, we shall 
have an antagonism in that union quite as great; 
fiftyfold intensified, it may be, beyond anything 
we have ever had m this. But if the other view 
is taken, and the border States are encouraged and 
protected in manufactures, the white population 
of those States will be so vastly increased that 
they will be but nominal slave States, finally be- 
coming free States by the very necessities of their 
existence under that inexorable law of population 
to which I have referred. What principle in free- 
trade, or any other principle for which they are 
now contending, will the cotton States have gained 
by this most disastrous revolution? What time it 
may take to effect these results, no human sagacity 
can foretell ; but that they will follow, if any reli- 
ance at all can be placed upon past experience, is 
at least my own fixed and solemn conviction. 
With a tier of free States along the whole northern 
border of Texas, the western borders of Louis- 
iana and Arkansas, the northern and western 
portions of Missouri, of Kentucky, of Virginia, 
and of Maryland, a distance of nearly four thou- 
sand miles, this inevitable law of population, 
operating from its geographical center in the 
Northwest, and with the facilities for settlement 
which a Pacific railroad will give, a branch of 
which the South voluntarily and most fallaciously 
relinquishes, the great hog-eating Teutons of these 
vast plains will bear down even upon Texas and 
Mexico, and ultimately bear them away from any 
confederacy into which they may enter. In the 
■ Union there is at least a fair prospect that Mex- 
ico, by the very necessities of our position, will 
fall into our hands, and in the providence of God 
it may yet be that this now distracted land, cursed 
with civil feuds, and racked with internecine 
wars, may yet be reserved for the purpose of 
working out the great problem under which the 
brain of this vast nation is now overwhelmed and 
reels. 

Mr. Speaker, gentlemen from the North shrink 
back in dismay at the very mention of a propo- 
sition to protect slavery south of the line of 36° 
30', either as applied to territory now existing, or 
which may be hereafter acquired, when it is per- 
fectly demonstrable, on the law of population to 
which we have referred, that every slave State 
erected within the tropics can only be had at the 
ultimate sacrifice of a kindred State along the bor- 
ders of the free States. The policy is the policy 
of Saturn feeding on the bodies of his own chil- 
dren. It is time the North, as well as the South, 



appreciated this state of facts. The field for argu- 
ment and illustration thus presented is inviting 
indeed; but within the limits of an hour 1 can but 
make suggestions, rather than maintain any ex- 
tended line of remark. The question for the states- 
man to decide is: whether the South shall not be 
guarantied by constitutional enactments, if need 
be, in the principle secured to her by that instru- 
ment itself, by the decision of the Supreme Court; 
a principle which may not only be barren of any 
practical advantage to her, but, if rendered effect- 
ive, can only be so on the basis of a compensat- 
ing benefit to the free States themselves, of open- 
ing up new fields in a temperate and genial clime 
for the increase of white population. 

I would fain hope, in the determination of this 
vast question, we may rise above the silly pre- 
judices and splendid shams of the hour. Let wa 
have no more cant. Let our eyes not blink under 
the truth as it is. Let us enlighten, as best we 
may, the people of this great country, not only 
as to theirduties in the present, but as to their 
destiny to come. Let us feel we have a country 
to save, instead of a geographical section to rep- 
resent. Let us act as men, and not as partisans; 
and the old Constitution, now in the very trough 
of the sea, with battered masts and sails in shreds, 
rolling at the mercy of every breaker, will again, 
with her dark and weather-beaten sides, loom 
from the deep; will again skim over the waves 
like the sea-bird, that scarce wets his bosom on 
their snowy crests, ringing with glad shouts, and 
the rapture of anticipated triumph, as when she 
ranged, like a mighty monster of the deep, be- 
neath the castles of Tripoli, striking them dumb 
as she passed, or, as when she spread her broad 
and glorious banner to the winds, and rushed, 
like a strong man rejoicing to run a race, on the 
Guerriere and the Java. 

Mr. Speaker, I have necessarily left much un- 
said. My last hope upon this most distracting 
question is upon the action of Virginia. Heed 
her voice while yet you may ! I would now con- 
clude all I have to say in the solemn warning of 
one of her noblest sons, the author of the Dec- 
laration of Independence himself, who, in 1798. 
in a period not unlike the present, appealed to 
erring sisters to cling to the sanctuaryof their 
fathers. 

" In every free and deliberative society, ".say* 
he, " there must, from the nature of man, 'be op- 
posite parties and violent discussions and discords; 
and one of these, for the most part, must prevail 
over the other for a longer or snorter time. Pe f - 
haps this party division is necessary to induce 
each to watch and delate to the people the pro- 
ceedings of the other. But if, on a temporary su- 
periority of the one party, the other is to resort to a 
scission of the Union, no Federal Government can 
ever exist. If, to rid ourselves of the present rule 
of Massachusetts and Connecticut, we break up 
the Union, will the evil stop there ? Suppose the 
New England States be alone cut off: will our 
natures be changed? Are we not men still, with 
all the passions of men? Immediately we shall 
see a Pennsylvania and Virginia party arise in tho 
residuary confederacy, and the public mind will 
be distracted with the same party spirit. Wlxat 



8 



game, too, will one party have in their hands by eter- 
nally threatening each other, that unless they do so, 
they will join their northern neighbors ? If we re- 
duce our Union to Virginia and North Carolina, 
immediately the f nflict will be established be- 
tween the rt ■ - ntatives of these two States; 
and even they * ill end by breaking into their sim- 
ple units. Seeing, therefore, that an association 
of men, who will not quarrel with one another, is a 
thing that never yet existed, from the greatest 



Confederacy of nations down to a town meeting 
or vestry; seeing that we must have somebody 
to quarrel with, J had rather keep our New Eng- 
land associates for that purpose than to see our bick- 
erings transferred to others." A little patience, 
mark you, Mr. Speaker — " a little patience, and 

WE SHALL SEE THE REIGN OF WITCHES PASS OVER, 
THEIR SPELLS DISSOLVED, AND THE PEOPLE RECOV- 
ERING THEIR TRUE SIGHT, RESTORING THEIR GOV- 
ERNMENT TO ITS TRUE PRINCIPLES." 



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